Footprints of 9/11

Yesterday, there were nearly a dozen New York City firefighters in the San Diego area, helping to rebuild houses destroyed by last October's wildfires. Their visit was organized by the New York Says Thank You Foundation, an organization that spends each 9/11 anniversary helping U.S. communities that have been struck by disaster.

It's New York's way of showing appreciation to their fellow countrymen for the outpouring of love and support that followed 9/11.

It's one of the reasons that the terrorists will never win.

The Islamo-Fascists don't "get" America. They hate, resent, and envy us. They delight in seeing any of us dead. But they don't understand us, and they never will.

Americans build, terrorists destroy. Americans liberate, terrorists enslave. Americans look ahead with hope to the future; terrorists look back in anger to the distant past.

There's a brilliant line in Shakespeare's Othello that reads, "The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief." The NYC firefighters who traveled 3,000 miles to learn how to swing hammers under the shimmering California sun have forged another unbreakable link onto the chain of American spirit, goodwill, and generosity. They show, yet again, how the American people can find a way to shed the light of joy and goodness on the blackness of hatred and evil.

They leave footprints in which no terrorist can follow.